Travel Log: The Hills Are Alive

Photos in this post by Ben and Michael.

We woke up to a beautiful day. I'm not sure if I've mentioned that breakfasts have been included in every hotel we've booked. And they are very good breakfasts. Just simple things like breads, meats, cheeses, yoghurts, fruit, and cereals, but it's all fresh and pretty tasty. And it was a great way to start each day. We usually met in the breakfast area at about 8:30 and then hit the road at about 9:30. Leaving our hotel outside of Venice was no different.

We drove out of Venice and went west first and then north. The trip today would take us to Austria. Our destination: Innsbruck - host of the 1964 and the 1976 Winter Olympics.

Even before we hit the border, scenically and architecturally, we could tell we were leaving Italy. The plains turned into hills which turned into mountains. We were back in the Alps and the views were breathtaking. This part of the Alps had more green than what we had experienced on our trip through Switzerland. It really looked like the scenery from The Sound of Music. As we moved north, architecturally, the buildings changed. I've not got the vocabulary to explain the difference, but as we went north, the buildings began to look different.

Once we made it to the border, we paid our Italian exit fee (road toll) and drove through Austria to Innsbruck.

Once again, our sat nav took us exactly where we wanted to go and as we arrived at the hotel, we were happy to find that we could actually park nearby. The drive was only a few hours, so when we arrived it was lunchtime. We were hungry and Alan wanted a beer - shoot we all wanted a drink. So we set out to find weiner schnitzel and lager - and we got exactly what we were looking for. I hope I can find the picture of Alan drinking a litre of beer - he was a happy man.

The lunch was spectacular. Veal schnitzel, chicken schnitzel, and the best salad I've had. It was 3-4 salads all in one bowl. The cucumber salad stands out for me and so does the potato salad. If you can remember salads 5 months later, you know they were good.

Cranberry Sauce - The schnitzel was served with a little tiny jar of cranberry sauce. I asked if I could buy a few jars (I wanted a case), but the waitress said that they didn't sell it (what a shame). She told me I could probably find some in the stores around town. Thank goodness, I did. I brought a big jar home and was very happy when AQIS let it into Australia. I plan to bring it to the US for Thanksgiving dinner.

We could see that there was a chairlift that goes to the top of the mountain and we inquired about that. It seemed like a great way to spend the afternoon. Besides, it was really warm (dare I say, hot?) in the city, so we wanted to get some elevation and cool down. Angela decided to give this part a miss so that she could rest her leg (which was pretty swollen and sore, I must say - she surely did the right thing by not going).

So Alan, Michael, Ben and I made our way to the train/gondola ride up. It was two stages. The new train was beautiful and well run. It took us up to a nice skiing village. Then we walked around to the gondola to go more than halfway up the mountain. Unfortunately, we were too late to do the third leg which gets you to the very top.

Snow and skiing. That's what we saw when we got to our highest point. Oh, and a bar. We found a bar, got a drink, and made our way outside to soak up the sun and the view. I'll let the pictures do the talking....

OK - We went back down and walked around a bit. After meeting up with Angela again, we decided to look for a place to eat. I don't think we asked anyone; we just walked around and explored. In the end, we had Japanese for dinner. It was relaxing and nice. We walked slowly in the warm evening and, of course, made our way back to the place where the gelato was being sold. :)

I do believe we were uncannily sober when we made our way back to the hotel that night.

Innsbruck was beautiful. It was clean, pretty, warm, relaxed, and we had a good time there.
We could hardly believe that we only had one stop left. We hoped that we hadn't made a mistake in selecting our next destination. It was the only real wild card in our itinerary.